A homeless man walks by as Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell, center, talks with Rafael Cabrera after leading the Midnight Mission running club on a five-mile run around Los Angeles. Cabrera says he changed his life during his prison sentence and that Mitchell helped him to get his parole approved when others denied him.

Early Thursday morning Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell, second from right, David Askew, left, Ben Shirley and Ryan Navales hit the final stretch of their five-mile run around Los Angeles.

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Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell was raised in Irvine, put himself through UCLA and, 18 months ago, started a running club at a mission on Skid Row.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell's chamber holds pictures of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., President Abraham Lincoln, President Barack Obama and other people who he feels have dedicated their lives to pursuing justice, equality and nonviolent conflict resolution.

Early Monday morning Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell gathers the Midnight Mission running club to start a five-mile run around Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell starts his work day after leading the Midnight Mission running club on a five-mile run around downtown Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell is reflected in a portrait of President John F. Kennedy. Both of Mitchell's parents worked on Kennedy's campaign; Mitchell said the president's death is a vivid memory from his childhood.

Early Monday morning Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell greets Ben Shirley, one of the first members of the Midnight Mission running club. "Judge Mitchell is just a good dude, a mentor in a real way," Shirley said.

Early Monday morning Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell leads the Midnight Mission running club on a five-mile run around Los Angeles. Mitchell is being honored with an Irvine Public Schools Foundation "Spirit of Excellence" award. He was raised in Irvine, put himself through UCLA and, 18 months ago, started a running club at a mission on Skid Row. Twice a week, at 6 a.m., the group goes on a five-mile run; in early October, the judge and other members of the group traveled to Ghana together to run a marathon.

David Askew, left, high fives members of the Midnight Mission running club after their five-mile run around Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES – At the Bible-black hour of 6 a.m., the courtyard of the Midnight Mission on Skid Row is congested with homeless addicts – some awake and wrapped in blankets, others burrowed into sleeping bags, a few in wheelchairs – all waiting, often for days, to get into one of the rehab center’s 250 beds.

But twice a week, a spout of men shoots out of the courtyard’sdoorway into the predawn.

Runners.

They head east, toward the Sixth Street Bridge, weaving like shadows, avoiding early-morning commuters and sidestepping the tents and makeshift beds.

For some, this is their first 5-mile run. For others it’s routine, a daily step toward a larger goal.

As they run, without speaking a word, the men gel into smaller groups, forming packs.

At the front is a runner who controls the group’s pace like a metronome, his legs barely leaving the ground – a man who invited the others to run, reaching out to them when they had lost their footing and were low.

A judge.

• • •

Before he started the Midnight Mission running club, long before he became a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge, Craig Mitchell, 57, was also – in a way – homeless.

It was the mid-1970s and the money he made working two jobs while at University High School in Irvine had lasted just one quarter in the UCLA dorms. Soon, he was living in his Volkswagen van, taking classes, cranking out papers on a manual typewriter, working 35-hour weeks as a janitor, security guard or limo driver and parking on the street “wherever police would leave me alone.”

“I felt I was lucky,” Mitchell says. “My friend was living in the back of his Ford Mustang.”

After UCLA, and before he became a judge, Mitchell taught high school.

And during 17 years of government and English courses in South Central Los Angeles, Mitchell taught some students who became lawyers, and others who became convicts. The neighborhood was contested gang turf, but the same Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips that shot at rival gangs on weekends also demanded every student in Mitchell’s class be on their best behavior, treating their teacher with the same high respect he showed to them.

In 1994, after attending law school at night, he switched careers, becoming a prosecutor with the District Attorney’s Office of Los Angeles County.

Soon, he saw how judges – fair judges in his view – could affect the lives of victims and criminals.

In one trial, as he prosecuted a man accused of raping developmentally disabled women, Mitchell saw a judge patient enough to hear out victims who could barely speak. In another case, also involving rape, he found a judge willing to empanel three separate juries so the victim had to testify only once.

Mitchell wanted to do that kind of work and, in 2005, won election as a Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles County. Soon he hung a picture of his hero, Abraham Lincoln, over his bench and began his third career, as a judge.

• • •

The pounding of runners’ feet awakens Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights, the only off-road distance of the course. Some know the route with their eyes closed. They’ve been running the same course for months.

Yet it’s a wonder they’re here at all.

The Midnight Mission sits on the southwest corner of the intersection of Sixth and San Pedro streets in Los Angeles, a privately funded, 250-bed, drug and alcohol rehabilitation shelter for men who are homeless or paroled to the facility.

Mitchell first visited the mission in 2012, taken there by a man he’d sentenced to prison three years earlier. While chatting with the mission’s president, the conversation shifted to a Runner’s World article about an East Coast group of ex-convicts who were staying out of prison by running. Mitchell thought: could a similar concept work here for addicts?

A short time later he founded a running club at the Midnight Mission. Within months, the club included a small core of men who in one way or another were trying to rejoin the world.

There was Ben Shirley, 49, the former bassist for the rock band U.P.O. He had toured with Metallica and played to 80,000 screaming fans before nearly drowning in a life of vodka and heroin.

And there was David Askew, 45, the recovering crack addict who used to sleep under the bridges he was now running over.

Then there was Rafael Cabrera, 49, who spent more than half his life in prison after murdering a rival gang member at age 18.

Cabrera said he grew up while in prison, working with priests and corresponding with the mother of the teen he killed, asking her for forgiveness.

Mitchell met Cabrera during a 2004 parole hearing. Though he was a prosecutor representing the state in that hearing – a task that typically means asking parole commissioners to keep a man in prison – Mitchell was surprised to see something other than a hardened killer when he looked at Cabrera.

Though Cabrera was denied parole that day, he started writing to Mitchell and his appointed defense lawyer. Only Mitchell wrote back, beginning a correspondence in which the two men shared ideas about politics, religion and the nature of justice.

When Cabrera’s next parole hearing came around, Mitchell, who had become a judge, wrote a letter recommending Cabrera’s release. In 2010, after 28 years in prison, Cabrera was granted parole.

One of the first places he visited as a free man was Mitchell’s courtroom.

He walked through a door behind the bench and was met with the cold stares of police and court officers.

He was there to see Mitchell, he announced. A man said the judge was busy but assured he would pass on the message. A short time later, the reply came.

“That name must mean something” to Mitchell, a man told Cabrera. “Because he’s on his way.

“And he’s running.”

• • •

As the runners cross First Street Bridge and head back into the city, the sun is rising behind them.

Eighteen months ago, many of the runners struggled on this backstretch. Now, only the newer members are tired.

In March, nine members of the Midnight Mission running club, including Mitchell, ran in the Los Angeles Marathon. Last month, Askew, Shirley and Mitchell ran the Accra International Marathon in Ghana.

Most of the club’s original members have moved out of the mission and are working or attending school. One has gone back to prison.

Still, those who can return to run with Mitchell through Skid Row.

“I’m thinking this sucks because it stinks down here,” says Shirley, who spent 26 months at the mission.

Shirley doesn’t want to see himself as the man he was when he joined the club. The predawn ritual with Mitchell, he says, is a healthy reminder that no one is far from bottom.

“That’s me out there in the (mission) courtyard … Circumstances may be different, but down at the core, it’s pretty much the same.”

He’s a student now, playing upright bass in an orchestra and planning to get a degree in film score composition.

Askew has changed too. He works for AmeriCorps, helping homeless people find housing, and he paints at night. Mitchell commissioned Askew to paint a portrait of his family, a work that hangs in Mitchell’s home.

Cabrera works at a nonprofit that helps families of incarcerated people. Both he and Mitchell say they miss their pen pal correspondence, though they meet for dinner every few months.

Mitchell says some co-workers think it’s nutty for a judge to grow close to such men. But he says life isn’t something to partition.

“Did (Cabrera) at one point engage in a monstrous act?” Mitchell says. “Yes he did. But that does not define who he is today … Until we stand before our creator, we can make some life-altering decisions.”

• • •

As the runners make the turn back into Skid Row, they’re near the route’s end.

They head down a shaded, warehouse-lined side street, passing small groups of people looking for work or simply chatting. When a runner takes off in a sprint, heading for an imaginary finish line, a few of the people on the street jokingly cheer; others heckle. Most ignore it.

For the runners, it’s time to split paths.

Cabrera, Askew and Shirley will head to work or school. Other runners will re-enter the mission, to work again toward sobriety.

The numbers suggest it’ll be hard. Only one in four of the people in the mission who achieve the basic goals of getting a job and moving into their own homes will remain sober for a full year.

The runners hope their odds are better, but even that’s unclear. At least one man who used to run with the group is back on the street, Cabrera says. He was a good runner, too.

A key to their success may lie in something indescribable that happens in those early-morning hours, when the roads are theirs; when putting one foot in front of the other and breathing steadily are the only thoughts to cross their minds until it all just slips into a rhythm of their own.

The runners turn south toward the mission. A few slow to a walk; others push faster.

But the judge, having said his goodbyes, turns away and heads east, running toward a sun that has begun to shine on Skid Row.

Jordan Graham covers congressional politics and county government for the Orange County Register. He began his career reporting freelance civic and watchdog journalism in his hometown of Chicago before moving westward in 2013. He has previously covered Irvine, the San Fernando Valley and Costa Mesa for the Register. He is a graduate of University of Illinois and Northwestern University. Please email or call him with news tips.

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